Washington, DC — The Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park, spanning the borders of South Africa, Mozambique and Zimbabwe, is the largest, and most ambitious effort in Africa to combine conservation, environmental protection, tourism and economic development. If successful, the Great Limpopo Park will be the world's largest game park, a huge 3.5 million hectare area incorporating what is today South Africa's Kruger National Park, Mozambique's Limpopo National Park and the Gonarezhou National Park in Zimbabwe.
But the challenges are immense. The presidents of the three countries signed the treaty formally establishing this new super park in December 2002 and several kilometers of fencing between the Mozambican and South African side have been symbolically cut down. But the park itself will probably not expand to its full boundaries for at least five years.
Nonetheless, the new park is already being offered as a model for future development projects in Africa. "The park will open to the world the biggest ever animal kingdom, increasing foreign investment into the region and creating much-needed jobs for our people, further acting as a symbol of peace and unity for the African people", says Mohammed Valli Moosa, the South African Environment Minister. South Africa is actively promoting the establishment of several "peace parks" across frontiers in southern Africa.
The potential benefits of the new Transfrontier park for the wildlife population, for the people who live in the area and for the region as a whole are tremendous, agrees Eddie Koch, a director of Mafisa Research and Planning, a South African agency specializing in ecotourism.
But in an interview with allAfrica, Koch points out that before the Great Limpopo Park can become a model, the governments involved will have to overcome a series of serious obstacles: There is still no plan for how to deal with the 20,000 Mozambicans living within the existing borders of the park, the plans for economic development projects to benefit local communities have not been developed and the political turmoil in Zimbabwe is actively destroying the wildlife population that was to be preserved by this park.
When the three presidents signed the treaty formally establishing this park in December 2002, there was a lot of talk about the potential for economic development and the other great social benefits of the park. But from an ecological point of view is this huge park a good idea?
The theory is a good one from a number of ecological points of view. It massively expands the protected areas in southern Africa and converts small, fenced-in protected areas into large eco-systems. So that is, in theory, a good objective.
In particular, it makes a huge difference for the Kruger National Park in terms of elephant management. The Kruger Park is facing a massive dilemma currently: how to deal with a very quickly growing elephant population. Its elephant herd has grown from 7,000 to 11,000 over the last couple of years because Sanpark, the South African government conservation agency, about three years ago took a decision to stop culling.
They used to shoot a few hundred elephants a year in order to keep the population. It was a very, very controversial exercise. It involved an undoubted amount of cruelty to elephants, and the herds from which they were shot, and it was never scientifically proven that the figure of 7,000 was the correct population for Kruger. So there was a huge outcry and Sanpark decided to stop culling.
One reason for the Transfrontier Park was to expand the amount of range land for elephants. So that the elephants could in fact roam freely rather than reach a population size that would force the park authorities to take this very controversial practice to keep the population down.
But it sounds as if all that will achieve is to buy time. Won't the herd keep growing and eventually become too large even for this larger park?
This buys a couple of decades. In the meantime there are a whole set of other programs underway to deal with elephant population. It is a big problem for African protected areas, southern African protected areas in particular.
So there are definite advantages in ecological terms.
There are undoubted advantages in ecological terms. But remember that in fact this Transfrontier Park is not a reality. All that has happened is that a couple of kilometers of fencing have been taken down.
It is a symbolic gesture that the governments have taken, and a treaty has been signed. Even on the ecological side, there are massive sets of issues that need to be dealt with properly before the park can become a reality.
For example, there is a big and undecided issue about where to place the fence. If the fence between Kruger and Mozambique is going to come down, is there going to be another fence on the Mozambican side of the big park running down the Limpopo river? The western boundary of the new super park, the Transfrontier Park, is the Limpopo River in Mozambique, which is unfenced. On the ecological front there are huge problems with fencing because the animals, when the park is repopulated, will require access to that river. As of yet there is no answer about whether or not the park will be fenced, or left an open system.
It is important to remember that while the objective is noble, the effort required to make that a reality is huge.
Do you think they can have the first part of the park in place by the end of 2003?
I don't think so. In fact there was an attempt to translocate some elephants around the middle of last year. That has been put on hold because the planners of the initiative, the three governments and the Transfrontier Park foundation, neglected to consult with the people living in the park who justifiably complained bitterly that, all of a sudden, elephants were likely to be in their back yards and they had to deal with them. They complained and the ministers, the South African minister in particular, put a hold on the elephant transfer.
What they have done is built a big enclosure, about 30,000 hectares and are slowly moving smaller species - planes game, zebras, wart hogs - to that large enclosure on the Mozambique side. But that enclosure should not be confused with the big park. The Kruger is 2 million hectares. But it is symbolically important, because it is the beginning of a relocation of game back into Mozambique where these species have been decimated.
So the framework conditions have been set, the treaty and the set of cooperative management practices have been put in place. But any notion that we would have the biggest game park in the next five years is fanciful.
What kinds of other issues must they deal with?
These are huge issues, just on the ecological side. And so far we're excluding Zimbabwe. We are just talking about South Africa and Mozambique. Zimbabwe presents a massive set of biological, ecological, political and social problems.
The reality on the ground in Zimbabwe is that land invasions are causing the opposite of what the Park was intended for. There is a massive, massive wave of poaching and destruction of wildlife in the very area that should link the Gonarezhou Park to the Kruger Park. And that is directly related to the Zimbabwe government's policy of condoning land invasions.
There is a huge paradox at play: while the Zimbabwe government has signed a treaty to initiate the Transfrontier Park, it is promoting a land redistribution policy on the ground which is undermining the underlying themes behind the park being created. Some estimates are that up to half of the Zimbabwe wildlife population has been killed since the land invasions began. That is an estimate put forward by the Zimbabwean Agricultural Union, which does represent white farmers who are losing their land, so it may or may not be an objective analysis. But it is undoubtedly the case that the wildlife population is being affected.
That is happening in the very area where this so-called peace park is being planned. For me and a number of commentators, this calls into question the South African government's policy toward Zimbabwe. Where, on the one hand, it is very keen to see the establishment of the Transfrontier Park, on the other hand it has this policy of appeasement toward the Zimbabwean government. South Africa's policy toward the Zimbabwean government and Robert Mugabe is undoubtedly at odds with its policy toward the Transfrontier Park. It is a contradiction.
What are the major steps that need to be taken in the next five years in order to make this park a reality?
On the ecological side there are a number of other problems which one cannot go into. But one of them is that there is the tuberculosis epidemic in Kruger amongst the buffalo population as well as other species. There is a huge question about whether opening up the boundary doesn't result in that epidemic spreading. That is a huge, intractable ecological issue.
And then there are things like how the prevention of foot and mouth disease is going to happen. These species - buffalo and others - carry foot and mouth. But those things can be solved with appropriate fencing.
I don't want to lose track of a very important issue that you have written about in the past: do these super-parks offer a model not only of conservation management or ecological development, but also for sustainable development?
The social side is really a critical one. Let me say that I think on the South African and Zimbabwean side, it is accepted by the rural communities that the park has massive potential in terms of local economic development. Tourism is a hugely growing industry. It has taken a knock in Zimbabwe because of the political crisis, but if that resolves itself it is highly like that Zimbabwe will come into its own.
Certainly, the Sengwe people who live in the Zimbabwe side of the border are very supportive of the Transfrontier Park if it is done the right way. So are many of the people living on the South African side, on the borders of Kruger Park. I fact, there is a group of people called the Makulekes. This group of people, you can call them a tribe because they are a cohesive group under a chief, were given land back in the Kruger Park which is right in the heart of the Transfrontier park. And they are running a huge number of very, very innovative programs around tourism conservation and local development which are an example of what can be done if people are dealt with properly.
On the Mozambican side there have been a lot of problems due the very real lack of planning and consultation with different sectors of the population. And those problems are quite well summarized in the Park for the People report. There is now a major effort to solve that problem and to bring those people more into the planning process. I think there is now both the will and signs of the capacity being developed to consult the Mozambicans as well.
So could this park be a model for combining conservation efforts and efforts to promote sustainable development?
The park has huge potential in terms of sustainable development in what are very remote parts of southern Africa which are very arid savannah regions without any other real alternatives. Agriculture is marginal and there is no industry. These are really the poorest parts of southern Africa that do stand to benefit if this is done the right way.
This involves something that is basically a human rights issue. It involves giving local residents rights and respecting them. It involves giving them land rights and small commercial rights so that they can use the park and its resources to create an industry that they work in but also that they own from the beginning. If it is done that way then I am optimistic that the park will have major benefits for the future.
People will be living within the boundaries of the park?
That is one of the questions. That is why I cautioned against the notion that this park exists. There are 20,000 people living in Mozambique over whose heads that statement that you just made is a question. Nobody knows whether they will stay there or whether they will move and with what kind of compensation. That question is unanswered. And I fail to see how you can talk about a Transfrontier Park, when there are 20,000 people living in the area and there is, as of yet, no policy about what is going to happen to them.
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That is the core question - the welfare of those 20,000 people who, as the Wits report, points out, only recently returned to their ancestral lands from which they were dislocated by war. What happens to them should be the very first planning issue. And it is very late [to be having that discussion].
Are there people on the South African side living within the boundaries of the park?
No.
And on the Zimbabwe side?
On the Zimbabwean side there are. But there is a corridor winding down the western Zimbabwean border with Mozambique called the Sengwe corridor which is owned by the Sengwe people. They own it but they are willing to keep it free of settlements.
What about the idea that this park will provide economic development to the people living in the general area around the new park?
While the South African government and the environment minister have committed themselves to creating models that work in terms of sustainable development around the Transfrontier Park, there are very real signs and lots of evidence to show that on the ground, the ministers officials are botching things up.
In fact, there is no real commercial and tourism plan to promote local economic development. Where efforts have been made to alleviate poverty, these have been done in an incredibly bad way. So the minister is well-intentioned and has very good policies and he has put the framework in place, but he is now going to have to concentrate on delivering the goods on the ground if this park is to become a model. It could become a model, but there is a huge amount of work that needs to be done in terms of creating sustainable forms of economic activity, primarily around tourism, that benefit the rural poor. So far, the performance has been very, very poor.
If all three governments want this park to become a model for the rest of the world, I would say they need to develop a local economic program that works, with examples that are a shinning success; they need to solve the problem of the 20,000 people in Mozambique who are vulnerable and poor, amongst the poorest of the poor; and somebody, somehow has to tackle the big crisis in Zimbabwe. Otherwise this park won't be what it could be.
Where else are cross-border parks with similar issues emerging in southern Africa?
There is another one across the Northern KwaZulu Natal-Southern Mozambique border. There is one between South African and Lesotho, the Maloti-Drakensberg.
There is a very big one that already exists, because it is a big open system between South Africa and Botswana, the Kgalagadi Transfrontier park. That is a very interesting one.
There is a very big one call Uzokti, the Upper Zambezi-Okavango Tourism Initiative. This is a very ambitious one - it takes in the Caprivi strip, the Okavango Delta, and the Zambezi Valley on the Zimbabwe side. It is huge and this is the heart of African unspoiled bush.
